The musings, opinions, thoughts, and complaints of a political minded Canadian citizen.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Campaign Update: An Interesting Development

A media release went out today with regards to a joint announcement from Ryan Meili and Erin Weir coming tomorrow morning. Needless to say, this has started the speculation wheels spinning.

So, there's a number of ways to speculate about what is going to be announced tomorrow. The first, and the one everyone immediately thinks of, is that Erin is bowing out of the race and endorsing Ryan.

Weir's team has done a recent Internet poll, and perhaps the results of that might have influenced the decision, but I think withdrawing at this stage is a little odd. Even if support was below expectations, considering that the debates have wrapped and advance voting has been going on for the better part of two weeks, withdrawing at this point just doesn't make sense.

So, if Erin isn't withdrawing, what else could the announcement be?

The next alternative is a public announcement of support, in that Erin asks his delegates to move to Ryan if he should be eliminated; and vice-versa. This isn't exactly common prior to an elimination, but if advance voting continues to be strong (lessening voting on the convention floor) it makes sense to do it now to get the most impact from such an agreement.

Even then, the timing of such an announcement still seems a little odd, as this should have been done weeks ago prior to the opening of advanced voting.

A distant, but other, possibility is that the two have common ground on a policy issue. At this point in the game, it would be a little late for a new policy (considering the debates have come and gone) but there is always room for surprise in any kind of campaign.

Ultimately, I would tend to favour the second option as my knee jerk response as to what will happen tomorrow morning; but ultimately, it's all speculation until it happens. Until then, I'm sure there will be plenty of people wondering just what is going to happen tomorrow morning.